![\"GP-500BP_P-web\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/GP-500BP_P-web.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nNew York City pianist Simone Dinnerstein played to a rapt audience at Lincoln Center recently, and demonstrated the remarkable sound of Casio\u2019s new CELVIANO Grand Hybrid digital piano. Stephen Schmidt could\u2019ve sworn he was seeing and hearing an acoustic concert grand.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetween the sound and the appearance, that\u2019s all I could imagine,\u201d he tells M Music & Musicians<\/em>.<\/p>\n Granted, Schmidt serves as vice president of Casio\u2019s Electronic Musical Instrument Division, so he might be slightly biased\u2014but he\u2019s hardly alone in thinking the CELVIANO Grand Hybrid is an astonishing instrument. In between pieces by Bach and Schubert, Dinnerstein praised the new model for its \u201csinging, sustained touch.\u201d Her selections showcased the CELVIANO\u2019s unique ability to capture the wide range of sounds and emotions that only come with a proper grand piano.<\/p>\n In fact, the CELVIANO Grand Hybrid re-creates the sound of three well-respected acoustic grand piano models produced in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna. For the Berlin grand tone, Casio worked closely with C. Bechstein, a renowned German piano manufacturer that Schmidt says pushed his research-and-development team to new heights of innovation.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re taskmasters,\u201d says Schmidt of his German partners, some of whom were on hand for the Manhattan event. \u201cWhen we first started developing the sound, we had 24 microphones placed around a piano. And Bechstein said, \u2018No, not good enough.\u2019 So we did it again\u2014our engineers went back to work with their people, and we thought, \u2018OK, this<\/em> is it!\u201d<\/p>\n Bechstein\u2019s response, Schmidt recalls: \u201cYou\u2019re about 75 percent there.\u201d That sent Casio\u2019s team back to the drawing board, and after months and months of work, Bechstein gave an enthusiastic sign-off.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if the process was difficult, the final product is setting a benchmark for digital pianos, especially in tone and touch,\u201d says C. Bechstein executive Ralf Dewor.<\/p>\n From L-R, Mike Martin, Koyo Nagoya, Karl Schulze, Stephen Schmidt, Ralf Dewor, and Shigenori Itoh at Casio\u2019s Grand Hybrid event. Karl Schulze is the CEO of C. BECHSTEIN and Ralf Dewor is the Head of Sales for C. BECHSTEIN. The other four are Casio executives including Shigenori Itoh, CEO of Casio America, Inc.<\/p><\/div>\n Indeed, the CELVIANO doesn\u2019t just sound<\/em> like an acoustic grand piano. Boasting a state-of-the-art Natural Grand Hammer Action keyboard that features full-length wooden keys and a cutting-edge mechanism that incorporates real hammers, the piano feels<\/em> like one, too.<\/p>\n The CELVIANO Grand Hybrid also features a Hall Simulator\u2014which offers players the experience of performing at some of the world\u2019s most renowned concert venues\u2014and a Concert Play feature that lets players tackle works by Tchaikovsky, Pachelbel, Smetana, and others with the backing of a symphony orchestra.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s everything we hoped it would be,\u201d says Schmidt. \u201cThe goal was to try to make a piano that\u2019s as close to authentic as you can in the digital world\u2014and it\u2019s amazing how close that is.\u201d \u2013Kenneth Partridge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CASIO LAUNCHES NEW CELVIANO GRAND HYBRID DIGITAL PIANO It\u2019s not the real thing, but it\u2019s really, really close. New York City pianist Simone Dinnerstein played to a rapt audience at Lincoln Center recently, and demonstrated the remarkable sound of Casio\u2019s new CELVIANO Grand Hybrid digital piano. Stephen Schmidt could\u2019ve sworn he was seeing and hearing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1058],"tags":[7688,7689,2601,7686,5043,7687],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14918"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14925,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14918\/revisions\/14925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"From](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/VH12880-web-casio-team.jpg\")